Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

EXERCISE LX.

DAVID'S LAMENT OVER SAUL AND JONATHAN.

C T. Brooks.

The paraphrast has introduced, in this version, the beautiful idea suggested by many critics, that David, in the phrase, 'beauty of Israel, has reference to the literal meaning of the Hebrew word

-'the gazelle,' and compares the death of Jonathan, the young and graceful, on Mount Gilboa, to the gazelle, which, when wounded, is said to go up into high places to die. The literal rendering would be, 'Thy gazelle, O Israel, is slain upon her high places.'

Thy beauty bleeds, O Israel!

How low the great and mighty lie!
Alas! thy beautiful gazelle
Climbs her high places·

there to die.

Oh! not in Gath the tidings tell;
Nor let the streets of Askelon
Hear how the brave and mighty fell,
Proclaim the glory that is gone!

How would Philistia's maids rejoice,
How would their boastings fill the sky;
Yea, the uncircumcised the voice

Of taunt and triumph lift on high!

Ye mountain-heights of Gilboa!

Let there, henceforth, be no more dew
By night, nor showers descend by day,
Nor fields of offerings wave on you.

For there the shield of Saul was seen
A trampled, vile, dishonored thing,
Of Saul, as though he had not been
Of God anointed prophet-king.

The blood of captains slain might track
The bow of Jonathan; and when
Did once the sword of Saul come back,
Unfleshed with fat of mighty men?

[blocks in formation]

They slumber, as they fell, the brave!

[blocks in formation]

Daughters of Judah! weep for Saul,
Who gave you scarlet, yea, and gold;
For him let tears of sorrow fall,
Whom ye shall never more behold.

How fallen in the midst of fight,
Alas! how low the mighty lie!

O Jonathan, upon thy height

Of promise fair, that thou should'st die!

Alas! I am distressed for thee,

My brother Jonathan! Oh! when
Such love, as thou hast shown to me,
Shall I on earth behold again?

How pleasant hast thou been to me!
Thy love was wonderful, — divine :
The love of woman could not be

More tender or more true than thine.

How fallen are the men of might,

Struck down amidst their places high!
Broken in fight, and spurned in flight,
Alas! how low war's weapons lie!

See Rule for the reading of Pathetic pieces, page 90, and Rule jor

the reading of Funeral pieces, page 111.

EXERCISE LXI.

HOWARD'S CAPTIVITY.- Mrs. Farrar.

The earthquake at Lisbon occurred on the 1st of November, 1755, a short time before Mr. Howard made his second visit to the continent of Europe. The shocks of this earthquake were felt in England, as well as in many countries still more distant from Spain and Portugal. The accounts of its extraordinary ravages at Lisbon, excited a strong curiosity in many people, to view the ruins of that city, and determined Mr. Howard, who was going abroad without any particular object but the benefit of his health, to turn his steps that way. Accordingly, he embarked on board a Lisbon packet; but instead of reaching its destined port, the vessel was captured by a French privateer.

When two nations are at war, as the English and French then were, it is customary for each government to allow merchant vessels to arm themselves, and capture the enemy's vessels. The property thus taken is, of course, lost to the owners forever, and divided among the captors; but the persons so taken, are considered as prisoners of war; they are . entitled to be well treated, and only deprived of their liberty, until an exchange of prisoners can be negotiated between the two contending nations.

So far, however, were the English sailors and passengers, captured on board the Lisbon packet, from receiving the treatment proper to prisoners of war, that their privations and sufferings were too bad for felons. They were carried into Brest, and there lodged in the filthy dungeon of an old castle that was used as a prison, with only a little straw to protect them from the damp floor. After being kept forty hours without food, a piece of mutton was then thrown in to them, but without a knife, or plate, or any decent means of dividing it. In this wretched situation, they all remained nearly a week. Mr. Howard was then removed to a prison at Carpaix, where he soon made the jailer his friend, and inspired him with so much respect and confidence, that, on giving his word and honor that he would not attempt to escape, he was allowed to live where he pleased in the town. This is a privilege always granted to officers of the army and navy, when made prisoners of war, but not extended to private individuals.

There was something in Mr. Howard's manner and appearance, which won the confidence even of strangers; and the person in whose house he boarded and lodged, at Carpaix, was so convinced of his integrity, that he supplied him with money and clothes, and maintained him during his stay, upon the simple promise of his guest, that he would repay him whenever he returned home, or could receive remittances from England. After two months thus spent, Mr. Howard obtained leave from the French authorities to visit England, and try if he could negotiate with his own government an exchange of himself for some French officer, captured by the English.

On his arrival in his native land, his friends hastened to wish him joy on the recovery of his freedom: but he begged them to suspend their congratulations, as he might yet be obliged to return to captivity. It was not usual for an exchange to be made with a private individual like himself; and therefore he had many fears that his negotiation would fail, in which case, he would, of course, return to France, and submit to a farther loss of liberty. This trial, he was happily spared: the British ministry agreed to the exchange; and Howard was once more a free man in his own country.

As soon as he was out of danger himself, he used every effort to procure relief for his, suffering countrymen who were still in captivity. Whilst at Carpaix, he had corresponded with the prisoners of war at Brest, Morlaix, and Dinnan, and learned that they were cruelly treated, that many hundreds had died from ill usage, and that thirty-six English sailors had been buried in a hole, at Dinnan, in one day. These accounts, together with what he had himself seen and felt of the barbarous treatment of prisoners, induced him to make so strong a representation of the case to the proper authorities in England, that they not only thanked him for his information, but set to work immediately, and in good earnest, to remove the grievance. Such arrangements were made with the French government, that Mr. Howard's benevolent heart was soon made glad, by hearing that all the prisoners whose situation he had described, were restored to their own country.

It was this slight experience of the captive's misery, which first interested Mr. Howard in that class of sufferers; but it was not till many years afterwards, that it became the chief business of his life to mitigate the sufferings of all prisoners.

EXERCISE LXII.

THE SON OF NAPOLEON. — Anon.

It was resolved by the Austrian cabinet, that the young king of Rome should be educated as a German prince. But the youth was in a moral prison; and his soul pined. It was deemed necessary that he should be cut off from all communication with the agitators and adventurers of France. To effect this object, he was kept in utter solitude; surrounded, it is true, by attendants and instructors, but still, in a social sense, buried in utter solitude. His orders were obeyed, his every wish anticipated; he had his books, his horses, and his equipages for promenade or the chase; but for all that the soul or the heart holds dear, he was, with slight exceptions, a solitary prisoner. This might be practicable to some extent with an Austrian archduke; but with a child in whose veins the quick blood of the Corsican conqueror flowed, it was a species of lingering moral torture.

To outward appearance, he was like Rasselas in the Happy Valley; but, like him, he was longing for all that was beyond the range of mountains that separated him from his fellowmen; in the one case, these mountains were physical obstacles, in the other, moral ones. The spirit chafed against the prisonbars; the victim, bruised and care-worn, refused its food, lost its substance, grew emaciated, and died. The mind all the while was developed and grew apace, while the body became debilitated, nay, aged; the truth being, that intellectual food may always be found in prison; but moral and social isolation prey upon the physical state: the creature grows up a sapless weed, with the suspicions and distrust of long experience, and the reflection and calm profundity of thought peculiar to unclouded age.

His intellect chiefly exhibited itself in mastering the history of his father in all its voluminousness, in the soundness and acuteness of his criticism on the several authors he had read, and in the facility with which he acquired the theory of war, and all the studies which conduce to it. He seems to have known, almost by instinct, that it was only through war that he could ever rise to more than a mere officer of the palace; and from the earliest age he took the deepest interest in every thing that partook of a military character. It was not, how

« ElőzőTovább »